Sugar Knoll is a fried chicken sandwich restaurant located in a small town near the eastern entrance to Zion. Since we were staying in a hotel nearby, we decided to give it a try for a weekday dinner.
The interior is large enough that I can't imagine them actually ever filling the space with enough customers. There's plenty of seating and a strange empty expanse right in the middle of the restaurant. The building has a cold, impersonal but modern interior complete with LVP flooring.
Walking up to the restaurant, the exterior smells like fryer oil. Unfortunately, the interior has a terrible chemical smell, like the adhesive on the LVP flooring hadn't been completely aired out. This restaurant is over a year old but it somehow still smells like fresh flooring. The fumes were way too strong for my tastes and I ended up having to order my food to go.
Deluxe Chicken Sandwich, Crispy Combo ($17.49) - The sandwich includes a buttered and toasted bun, toasted on both sides, a slice of tomato, slaw, pickles, three chicken fingers, and Sugar Knoll's special sauce slathered on the bottom bun. The chicken fingers seem to be freshly breaded and fried in house. It's a lighter scraggly batter that gives a softer crisp rather than hard crunch and it's dusted with salt, pepper, and seasoning salt. They only use white meat chicken and the chicken isn't over done, so the interior isn't dried out. The sandwich is kind of a mess to eat given the three separate pieces of meat that have a tendency to fall out while biting in. I'm actually surprised at the quality of the fingers - I assumed a middle of nowhere restaurant would use commercial chicken strips!
Sugar Knoll's special sauce is unfortunately subpar. It's like they took all the condiments they could find and mixed them together into a gloopy mess. The thing is - it's not even mixed very well! There are white splotches of mayo dressing the reddish color of the rest of the sauce. It has an off-putting flavor - heavily acidic with vinegar, yet smoky, like liquid smoke and hot sauce are mixed in. I wanted something to dip the fries in while eating, but I ended up having to throw out the extra cup of sauce they gave.
The combo comes with seasoned crinkle cut fries. The fries are... interesting. Most are pale white, some being undercooked a bit making the inside firmer than fluffy potato. The fries aren't fried long enough to puff open the starches, which makes them damp and soggy inside.
At least they aren't overly seasoned. I'm surprised they messed up the fries given the quality of the chicken fingers.
Sugar Knoll is definitely a mixed bag. Their fried chicken is surprisingly good. Unfortunately everything else they serve seems to be an afterthought.
Bathrooms - Two unisex rooms read more